Freshman Year & Other Unnatural Disasters (10 page)

Not even if she apologized on her hands and knees and offered to become a nun immediately. In the Alps.

Not even if she were in a horrible accident and was about to die and all she wanted in her final moments were my forgiveness and an opportunity to touch my hand.

Never.

I suddenly feel completely drained. I’m too exhausted to even put my thoughts together, or cry more, or anything. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to sleep.

15

What seems like a
very
short time later, I am nearly suffocated to death by a heavy weight collapsing on top of my stomach.

“What the eff?!”
I screech.

“Mom says you have to get up! It’s one in the afternoon and you have to help with Chanukah cards!”

I shove Travis off of me, which is easy to do since she weighs about sixty pounds and I’m madder than I’ve ever been in my whole life, practically.

“Do
not
come into my room without permission! What is with this family? Has no one ever heard of privacy?”

I wipe under my eyes with the side of my hand and come away with big black streaks. My face feels sore and dry from crying, and my legs are all cramped from sleeping in my jeans. What I want is a long, hot shower and to be left alone forever. What I do
not
want is a brat in my room chattering away about Chanukah cards.

“I’m telling Mom you hit me!”

“Fine, knock yourself out. And close the door behind you!” I’m not in the mood for threats from a nine-year-old, thank you very much.

“And you forgot to take your makeup off. You look like a dead corpse!” she shrieks, slamming the door.

“
All
corpses are dead, dummy!” I holler after her, throwing a pillow at the closed door.

I toss my clothes in a pile on the bathroom floor and turn on the shower. I can’t stop reliving the moment when the light hit Cassidy’s face and I realized she was kissing my true love for everyone to see. Every time I do, it hurts all over again, but I can’t stop torturing myself.

I get in the shower and scrub my face to get the makeup and dried tears off. Not to mention every scrap of Keith Mayhew, kissing stand-in. I can’t believe I hooked up with him when I didn’t even want to. I’d probably feel worse about that if I didn’t feel so bad for myself already. One thing at a time, I guess.

I’m rinsing the shampoo out of my hair when a major thought interrupts my nightmare replay:
Why on God’s green earth would Jordan pick
Cassidy?!

I comb conditioner through my hair as I mull this over. Lexi I could understand. I’d still be incredibly upset, but she’s gorgeous and perfect, so it’s at least logical. Cassidy … well, sometimes she can be far too liberal with the eye shadow. And she wears a weird belt that has a skull for a buckle. I mean, hello? We are not biker chicks. And … oh, this one time she ate six bacon and banana sandwiches on a dare. That’s just disgusting.

And she is probably a
terrible
kisser.

Unless … she’s a
great
kisser.

Oh my God.
What if Cassidy is this terrific kisser and Keith was right and I’m awful?

No. No, no, no, no. This simply cannot be the way this goes down. I rinse off and grab a towel. Clearly the only plan of action is to call Em. She’ll know what to do.

Her phone rings four times and goes to voice mail. I call again. Same thing. Em is never away from her phone, so she must be talking to James. I call a third time. Surely she’ll realize that this is an emergency.

No answer.

I call JoJo, who is apparently still sleeping, because when I say, “JoJo, I am so upset right now—can you talk?” she replies, “Huglubblnxk?”

Great.

I give up on niceties and shout, “I saw Cassidy making out with Jordan Rothman last night at the Scarves show! What the eff is going
on
?”

That snaps her out of it a bit. “Wait, what? Your Jordan? With Cass?”

“Yes, at the concert. She lied, JoJo—she was planning to go with him the whole time! And I think it’s been going on for weeks … you didn’t know about this, right? You’d tell me?”

“Kels, of course I didn’t. I swear!”

I’m so relieved—at least I’m not being deceived by
everyone
I hold near and dear. I guess my only real problem, then, is that I’ve had my heart ripped out, tossed in a blender, and then poured down the garbage disposal. Glad that’s cleared up. I tell JoJo, “You have to find out what’s going on. Call her. Text her. Send her a psychic message. Find out what the deal is!”

“Okay, okay, I will, but … I have to figure out how to handle this. I mean, this is big. Are you okay?”

“Not really,” I say, and I hate that my voice catches. I don’t feel like spending any more time crying over a stupid guy and a supposed friend. I take a deep breath. “I just want to know what’s going on.”

“Okay. Don’t freak out—maybe it’s a big misunderstanding. Maybe it wasn’t even her. Or … something. Ugh, boys are the worst. Anyway, I’ll call you back.” JoJo hangs up.

Now what?

I hate waiting.

I kill about an hour by acting out my imminent confrontation with Cassidy in the bathroom mirror. Then I try calling Em again, but she still isn’t picking up her cell. I contemplate calling her house phone, but I’m definitely too traumatized to make small talk with her parents right now.

I continue to mope around the house for the rest of the afternoon, occasionally sending JoJo a friendly text, such as
WTF is going on!?!?!? CALL ME. CALL ME OR I WILL HAVE TO MURDER YOU!!!!!!!!

That evening, I’m eating a PB&J in my room after being banished from the dinner table for point-blank refusing to help with the ridiculous Chanukah cards. As I was storming up the stairs, I heard my mother say, “I don’t know, Marvin. Do you think she’s doing drugs? Maybe we should take her to see that therapist on your racquetball team …” before I slammed my door as hard as possible. Why, I’d like to know, is teenage angst always blamed on drugs instead of totally insensitive parents?

Just as I’m about to go back to the kitchen to stick my head in the oven, my cell rings at last. It’s JoJo.

“Finally! What were you doing all this time? Are you trying to give me a second nervous breakdown?”

“Well, I—”

“Never mind, never mind. What did she say? Tell me everything.” My devastation has temporarily been replaced by an almost manic need to know exactly what is going on. I feel like, if I have all the information, I can make sense of this whole thing. I don’t
want
to know, really … but I
need
to know.

“Well, actually … I don’t think I feel comfortable talking to you about what Cass said,” JoJo mumbles hesitatingly. “I just … well, you’re both my friends. I don’t want to get in the middle. I want to stay neutral here.”

“What? I’m sorry—what?” I sputter in disbelief.

“I’m staying neutral. I’m sorry—don’t be pissed, Kels. I want to help.”

“‘Staying neutral’? Look, JoJo … neutral is stupid. If neutral were a good idea, more people would move to Sweden. Or Switzerland. Or … wherever. You can’t just … come on!” What could Cassidy have said to her? I feel like my life is falling apart. This cannot be happening.

JoJo is still talking about not wanting to take sides when suddenly I have a brilliant idea: I’ll call Lexi! Maybe she’ll have some insider info, since everyone worships her and probably just blabs all their personal info to her if she says hi to them in the hallway. Armed with a new plan, I quickly tell JoJo not to worry about it, whatever, and hang up.

I scroll to Lexi’s number in my phone. I’ve never called her before, except as part of the soccer phone tree, and even though she’s made all those friendly overtures, I still feel a little weird about it. Like I’m asking her out or something.

Well, whatever. This is an emergency situation.

She picks up after two rings and after some generic how-are-you chitchat I get down to business. As nonchalantly as possible, I ask, “So, want to hear something crazy? Guess who was totally hooking up at the Scarves show last night?”

“You?” Lexi guesses.

“Oh, well actually, yeah. Ha.” I give her a brief rundown of that disaster.

“Has Keith called you yet?” Lexi asks, which is something I hadn’t even stopped to think about in my Cassidy-Jordan frenzy. Am I dissed? Do I care?

I breezily say, “Eh, I’ll just see Keith tomorrow at school. It was pretty casual,” like I randomly make out with guys in our class all the time or something. Then I add, “Anyway, the big scoop is about Cassidy and Jordan! Can you believe it? Hahahahaha. Ha. Ha?”

Silence on her end.
I knew it!
I think.
She’s into him too and now she’s furious! We can destroy Cassidy together!

But then Lexi says, “Really? That’s surprising. I mean, Jordan’s such a jackass.”

Well, that isn’t what I expected her to say at
all
. Are we talking about the same Jordan here? Beautiful, blue-eyed Jordan? Jordan, who … well, I guess I never stopped to think much about his personality, actually. He’s just so hot, it didn’t seem to matter.

“Um, what do you mean?” I demand. “Jordan is awesome!”

“Ugh, Kelsey, he’s a total loser! He’s been hitting on me in a seriously gross way ever since I got here, like grabbing at me in the halls and stuff. I finally told him to cut it the hell out, and now he does this stupid thing where he laughs when he sees me in the hall or pretends to be talking about me. Like I care, right? It’s so pathetic and rude. At least in LA guys have manners.”

Okay … that is pathetic and rude, true.
He was grabbing at her, though?
Moment of pitiful self-loathing: Despite everything, I am still
completely
envious. Grabbing what, exactly? My boobs are way bigger than hers—or Cassidy’s, for that matter. Why hadn’t he ever tried to grab
them
? Oh my God. Am I really having these thoughts? I need to pull myself together.

Lexi continues, “Anyway, I guess I just thought Cassidy had better taste in guys. Besides, Jordan’s been doing it with Lori Soler since, like, mid-October. Didn’t you know that? I thought everybody knew that.”

Wait. What?!

So, back in seventh grade, a teacher supposedly walked in on a girl giving a very special performance in the music room with this guy who didn’t even go to our school. That girl was Lori Soler, and according to the bathroom walls, nothing has changed since.

And now Jordan is hooking up with her? Actually having
sex
with her? First of all, I can’t believe people in my grade are seriously having sex. Well, I guess I
can
believe it—I watch TV, for God’s sake. But Jordan? What is with this guy? I mean, with
Lori Soler
? Is he that desperate? He could have had
ME,
for crying out loud!

Well. You know what I mean.

Lexi and I chat a bit more about boys and their typical animal behavior and then we hang up. I have a lot to digest, obviously, not to mention a serious dilemma: Can I let my anger at Cassidy prevent me from telling her that she’s getting played? Even if she is a cruel, terrible person at the moment, she’s still technically one of my best friends.

And I certainly don’t want Cassidy to get an STD or something. I have no choice but to eat an entire box of fudge while I think it over, and then watch
Save the Last Dance
for about the eighty-sixth time instead of finishing my homework.

But I can’t even concentrate on that. I keep thinking about the whole mess. Can I really not say anything to Cassidy? She needs to know the truth, and from a friend; finding out through the rumor mill might serve her right for dashing my hopes and dreams, but it would be humiliating and awful for her.

But: if Jordan is having sex with Lori Soler, does that mean … could that mean that
Cass
is doing it with him too? Which would mean that a) she’d lost her virginity b) to Jordan, who was supposed to be with me, and c) hadn’t even
told me,
one of her best friends. And if she obviously cares so little about our friendship in the first place, then why should I bother telling her about Jordan and his filthy love triangle anyway?

But I should tell her. It’s the right thing to do. She’s still my … even though she … I couldn’t …

I must’ve dozed off, because around ten-thirty I wake up to Travis dancing around in the TV room like a maniac and my mother hollering about the disappearance of all the fudge. I drag myself to my bed, but I can’t sleep. All I can think about is Cassidy having sex with Jordan. I mean, have they done it once? A lot of times? Did it hurt? Was it … enjoyable? How do they, sort of, arrange themselves, really? Am I actually a bit glad I maybe have a devirginized friend who can tell me how the whole thing actually works in real life and not just how it looks on TV? Assuming I can ever be friends with her again?

It suddenly strikes me as so weird that Cassidy—who last year at this time hadn’t even kissed a guy, just like me—might now be on this whole other playing field. I mean, can we even relate to each other anymore? What am I going to say to her? “Oh my God, guess what? I kissed Keith Mayhew for ten minutes and I don’t think I liked it!” She’d snootily reply, “Oh, Kelsey, I’d love to talk about your childish games and suchlike, but I have to go to lunch at Pastis with my adult friends who have actual intercourse. Sorry.”

And what if lots of other kids are doing it, too? What if
all
of them are? JoJo got to third with some guy who worked at a record store last summer. No idea if she’s ever made out with a girl, assuming she does in fact want to. Em hasn’t had sex with James yet, but I know she’s been thinking about it.
What if I’m the only virgin left in the freshman class?
Is that even normal? I mean, we’re only fourteen. Doesn’t anyone want to, like, wait for five minutes before having sex all over the place?!

Maybe Lexi is wrong. Just because she has a pierced nose and a perfect body (and hair) doesn’t mean she knows
everything
.